BY JIM GREEN
ABC television's Media Watch program on September 11 took Channel Seven to task for "taking sides" in the debate over the proposed national radioactive waste dump in northern South Australia.
The story was initiated by the federal department of industry, science and resources, which sent Media Watch information and misinformation about the proposed dump and about Channel Seven's coverage of the issue.
Channel Seven initiated a media campaign against the proposed dump called "I'm with Ivy", enlisting the support of 80-year-old Ivy Skowronski, who gained some notoriety last year for her involvement in a campaign for stronger punishment of home invaders.
The "I'm with Ivy" campaign involved a web site (<http://www.imwithivy.on.net>), a petition (signed by 125,000 South Australians), and a rally in Adelaide on August 16. The dump proposal has featured on Channel Seven's Today Tonight program in SA at regular intervals.
Media Watch portrayed the "I'm with Ivy" media campaign as ratings-driven populism. Presenter Paul Barry said, "There's no doubt that 'I'm with Ivy' is a recipe for ratings success. Eighty-year-old granny rallies the masses to fight a nuclear war. And clever old Channel Seven has been right on top of the story."
Quoting Minchin
Barry quoted a letter from Senator Nick Minchin, the minister for industry, science and resources, which said, "Channel Seven is ignoring all the facts in its hysterical campaign against the Federal Government ... which is I believe motivated more by concern about its ratings than the national interest".
No doubt ratings have motivated Channel Seven. No doubt Channel Seven would not launch a media campaign if the villain was a commercial sponsor rather than the federal government.
"Now no one likes nuclear waste but people ought to be told the facts. That was Channel Seven's job", Barry asserted. A shame, then, that Media Watch got its facts wrong.
Barry asserted that "The waste is low-level ... stuff like gloves, lab coats and medical equipment, currently stored in hospitals and universities around Australia".
However, government literature makes it quite clear that short-lived intermediate level wastes will also be dumped in SA along with low-level waste.
The intermediate-level wastes include dismantled nuclear reactor components and much else besides from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which is by far the single largest generator of radioactive wastes in Australia (excluding uranium mines, where waste is stored on site).
Failing to mention ANSTO's role as the major radioactive waste producer obscures the political dimensions of the push for a national dump. The dump is an essential part of government plans to remove waste from the reactor plant in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights, in order to reduce political opposition to the plan for a new reactor there.
Before the September 11 Media Watch story, I sent a Media Watch researcher information demonstrating that the government intends to use the same site in SA as a store for long-lived intermediate level wastes, including wastes arising from the reprocessing of irradiated fuel rods from the Lucas Heights reactors. That material was ignored by Media Watch.
I also offered to send Media Watch a catalogue of government lies in relation to the proposed dump, but this offer was not taken up.
Barry asserted that the waste "would certainly be safer buried in the outback than it is now". However, there is substantial disagreement as to the pros and cons of centralised storage, and even greater debate over the pros and cons of underground dumps as opposed to above-ground storage. Media Watch was made aware of these debates but chose to ignore them.
Facts and factoids
Yes, people "ought to be told the facts", as Media Watch asserted. No doubt Today Tonight has got some of its facts wrong, it has been selective in choosing which facts to present, and it has been unaware of some of the relevant facts about the proposed nuclear dump. But these criticisms also apply to Media Watch.
Moreover, decontextualised factoids are the bread and butter of the commercial media. Clearly, "telling the facts" isn't enough.
Media Watch berated Channel 7 for "taking sides". In so doing the program reinforced the dominant ideology in the commercial media — the myth of objectivity, which in its day-to-day formulation involves journalists scrambling around to get "both sides" of a story.
All sorts of biases are wished away by the myth of media objectivity, not least biases arising in the choice of stories and the choice of sources. We get Liberal and Labor on the political issue of the day, we get Packer and Murdoch cronies pontificating on media regulation, and so on.
The bias implicit in this ideology of objectivity was exposed by Wollongong researcher Sharon Beder in her 1997 book Global Spin: "Journalists who accurately report what their sources say can effectively remove responsibility for their stories onto their sources. The ideal of objectivity therefore encourages uncritical reporting of official statements and those of authority figures. In this way, the individual biases of individual journalists are avoided but institutional biases are reinforced."
The commercial media frequently take partisan positions. The "I'm with Ivy" campaign was different because the partisanship was open, and the commercial media took a progressive stance for a change.
In addition to commercial imperatives, Channel Seven's "I'm With Ivy" campaign was motivated partly by its experience covering a protest at the Beverley uranium mine in northern SA on May 9, at which police viciously attacked the media, anti-nuclear activists, traditional owners and children.
The difficulties with the myth of media objectivity were neatly summarised by Jeff Cohen in the October/November 1989 issue of Extra!, the magazine of the US-based organisation Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (<http://www.fair.org/extra>): "There is a notion — widely believed in the mainstream media — that while there is propaganda of the left and propaganda of the right, there is no such thing as propaganda of the center. In this view, the center doesn't produce propaganda, it produces straight news."
"If, for simplicity's sake, we define the left as seeking substantial social reform toward a more equitable distribution of wealth and power, and we define the right as seeking to undo social reform and regulation toward a free marketplace that allows wide disparities in wealth and power, then we can define the political center as seeking to preserve the status quo, tinkering with the system only very prudently to work out what are seen as minor glitches, problems or inequities."
"It is a strange concept to many in the media. They can accept that conservatism or rightism is an ideology that carries with it certain values and opinions, beliefs about the past, goals for the future. They can accept that leftism carries with it values, opinions, beliefs. But being in the center — being a centrist — is somehow not having an ideology at all. Somehow centrism is not an 'ism' carrying with it values, opinions and beliefs."
"Some reporters act more like stenographers for those in power than journalists", Cohen wrote, a comment which Media Watch ought to consider since its "analysis" of the nuclear dump proposal went no further than direct quotes from Minchin.
It's anyone's guess why Media Watch chose to attack anti-nuclear activists and others campaigning against nuclear dumping in SA. Perhaps Barry et al. are trying to portray themselves as "balanced" in order to avoid the axe from ABC managing director, and former Liberal Party member, Jonathan Shier.
Whatever the reason, Media Watch indulged in some cheap populism that has not only given the federal government some ammunition in its campaign to dump nuclear waste in SA, but also reinforced conservative media myths.
Media Watch's producers and researchers have failed to respond to numerous phone calls, letters and emails from anti-nuclear activists since its September 11 program.